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I've never understood the difference between blue and self blue. Could someone enlighten me?
It's an entirely different genetics. Here's a pretty good explanation from another thread:
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Originally Posted by Gagirly
I was just curious first of all what the "self" means in self blue. What could I reasonably expect if I were to cross the the two types of blues ?
Self refers to a color that is solid and evenly distributed over the birds entire plumage and does not have any secondary color patterns ( like lacing) associated with the plumage color.
As Illia stated, self blues are actually lavender which is an expression due to a pair of recessive genes. The two genes dilute a black bird to light gray or blue color. The color is even and covers the entire bird.
Blue is expressed by an incompletely dominant gene. One blue gene produces a blue bird - two blue genes produces a splash bird. Splash is a whitish bird that has splashes of black or blue feathering.
Blue birds on the other hand have black lacing or feather edging associated with the plumage pattern; the head of the female is a darker color (dark blue to black) than the body and in males the pyle region is dark blue or black in color.
Crossing a blue with a lavender will be like crossing a blue with a black. You will get the same results because the lavender is recessive.
Blue X lavender = blue birds and black birds The blue birds may or may not have lacing or edging it depends genetics of the lavender bird and the blue bird.
Tim
